" The first man, away back in the later Pliocene, who knocked out a hairy elephant with his club, or saw his pretty reflection, or received a compliment, became suddenly conceited (it was a mutation) and there was immediately evolved the first reflective thought in the world. It was: 'I am the center of the Universe!' Where upon he took himself a wife, transmitted this bigotry of his germ plasm, and through hundreds of thousands of years the same thought without much alternation has been our heritage. "

― Harlow Shapley